Tag Archives: kasparov

The chess twittersphere either had a Post-Magnus Twitter depression or a Pre-Christmas Twitter blockade, because the number of chess related tweets reduced dramatically after the world championship match in November.

Fortunately, we had the London Chess Classic to follow. @london_chess:“It is actually the first time in 8 years that the London Chess Classic clashes with the world famous Olympia Horse Show!”

I had the privilege to travel to London for two days and I visited the Classic on Tuesday, 15 December. I had a talk with Dutch GM Erwin l’ Ami @erwinlami , who seconded his compratiot Anish Giri at the Chess Classic in London about the blog and chess tweets in general. He said that he often tweets during big events like the world championship and other big events, but that he does not feel the need to comment everything that is happening in the world of chess. Perhaps he had a talk with Anish about this subject, because after the London Chess Classic @anishgiri: tweeted “New Year’s resolution: tweet less, win more! “

For the benefit of this blog I can only say: tweet more and win more.

Anish Giri, photobombed!

@GMjtis: Giri is an absolute mystery to me. He fights hard, plays sharp positions, is so gifted. But he’s like Magneto in a universe of metal draws.

You can not say that Anish did not try to win a game in London: @Kingsheadchess tweeted: “Come on Giri, he’s only 45! Anish Giri playing on in dead draw, hoping that Mickey Adams will die of old age.”

Talking about old age: @thechessdrum: “Vishy responds to Giri’s “When will you retire” with “When are you going to win a game?” Got ’em!”

Vishy Anand: why retire?

@sergeykarjakin:“ If you ask me Giri has just become World Chess Draw Champion.”

The London Chess Classic is a wonderful chess festival, with many side ents and some of the best players of the world competing in final leg of the Grand Chess Tour 2016. But even the best players have bad days:

@jonathan_rowson; “Classic self-destruction by Aronian. The frustration of not being able to impose your will gets to even the very best players.”

What about former world champion Veselin Topalov? Oh dear, he had many bad days at the Classic. @mamdouh_ismael: “Is it time for Topalov to quit chess? What a shame to lose against So like this …

@LouLasher:” I love the way Topalov plays, right up till his games fall apart. It’s heartbreaking.”

Perhaps Toppi did not prepare very well? What is your guess, Peter Heine Nielsen@PHChess: “Italian blues; Topalov reknown for deep opening preperataion. 50K Euro question: Was this one of them?”

Toplaov had a simple answer: @GrandChessTour: Topalov: “My brain is not working”.

Talking about exciting openings: @TERrendle: “Wow, more excitement at the Classic in Naka vs MVL! Maybe instead of rapid tiebreaks at WC players are forced to play Najdorf?!”

Hikaru Nakamura: Najdorf, why not?

@joshfriedel: “I guess Caruana-Naka and Naka-MVL illustrate why everyone is playing the Berlin.”

@GMJtis: “Now wondering if the absence of Magnus allows the others let their hair down, or if this London Chess Classic is simply blessed.”

Andrew Martin agreed, @AMartinChess: “The games of the London Chess Classic 2016 are quite superb.”

Did we really miss Magnus in London? @TarjeiJS: “Around 9000 simultaneous viewers of the LondonChess live stream. Now, how much higher would that be with Carlsen playing?”

Happy Wesley

Superb winner of the Chess Classic and the Grand Chess Tour 2016 was Wesley So and he was praised by the Boss himself, @kasparov63: “Congratulations to Wesley So for winning the GrandChessTour! He showed great consistency &, bad news for opponents, he’s still improving.”

@elo_1985_mor: “A dream year for Wesley. Congratulations to him for his achievements. London Chess :best tournament of the year in terms of chess quality!”

However, chess also showed its ugly head in London at the FIDE Open: @london_chess: “The top clash in the FIDE Open, Bacrot-Gupta, was a draw in 5 moves, meaning Bacrot is guaranteed at least shared first!” @elgransenor1: “That was pathetic on board one of the FIDE open today, even by chess standards.”

On the final day, there was a lot of action in the Chess Classic Super Rapidplay, which was won by Valentian Gunina. @ginger_gm:“Amazing performance by Gunina. Well done! Girls are not as good as men!? Don’t think so!

Before we are going to have a look at tweets of game 4, let us look back at game three. Many, many tweets popped up in the Twitter timeline. Not surprisingly, most tweets came from India. “Chess” and “Anand” was trending in India, meaning that literally thousands of people congratulated Anand on his win in the third game. However, a rather nasty side effect showed up: the official Twitter hashtag #CarlsenAnand was flooded with spam, by spambots.

@anand_bombay: “I guess fans went overboard yesterday with the hashtag and the spambots caught on.”

A spambot is an automated computer program designed to assist in the sending of spam. Spambots usually create fake accounts and send spam using them, although in many cases it would be obvious that a spambot is sending it. (Wikipedia).

How to get rid of these spambots? I asked for advice on Twitter and @Art_Smart tweeted: “If you block those tweets and report them as spam, they disappear from your feed.” @traderDXB: “Just block all tweets containing “Google inbox invite” And voila!”

Sometimes “spam” can be funny, though.

Game four

Chess now! @kasparov63 tweeted about his old rival. Let us not forget that he played a world championship match against Vishy in 1995! Magnus Carlsen was 5 years old….

“Anand the old tiger cannot chase down his prey so easily these days, but if you put your head in his mouth his teeth are still quite sharp!”

And another tweet, by former world championship match contender @nigelshortchess: “I don’t like to be rude about my superiors, but I have to say that Magnus’ opening prep. was really shoddy yesterday”

Well, let’s check what the world champion played today then! What does Twitterland expect? @EinarGausel:“Don’t expect to see Magnus swinging for the fences today. The Champ will no doubt be looking for a slow, technical grind”. @dfreire: “Today we have a wounded Magnus Carlsen playing with white. It’s one of those rare occasions chess fans won’t want to miss”. @rajkashana: “Carlsen will try to get Vishy out of prep as quickly as possible. I doubt if he plans to enter Mordor again. :)”

Some useful information by @shrinjanr: “Every game Vishy wins he gains 6 elo points while Magnus gains 4. For a loss its -6 & -4 respectively. For a draw +1 & -1”

Are we ready for game four? Judit Polgar posted this picture.

@GMJuditPolgar: “Wanna know what a retired chess queen does in her free time? Gets a chair and checks what Vishy and Magnus are up to:)”

The story of game four in ten tweets:

1. @bennedik:“Very happy to see a Sicilian. Now wait for Magnus to take all the life out of the position and get a nice endgame”

2. @MarkTwic:“Was there a small disturbance in the audience to Carlsen-Anand game 4? Here Carlsen turns and stares?”

3. @rajachess: “Oh,almost my game against Carlsen from Wijk. I developped differently with black,had some problems,Anand wants to play with isolani pure.”

4. @FabianoCaruana: “Anand will be defending this for a while, but he can be confident about his chances to hold on”

5. @JanAageFjortoft: “Preparing for a football-game, watching Chess live on TV It’s a funny old game….”

6. @nigelshortchess: “I played a guy at blitz who explained he was hoping I would die of a heart attack. Perhaps this is also Magnus’ strategy? :)”

7. @Chessbase: “Magnus watches Philae land.”

8. @AnishGiri: “Vishy looks bored, I think he wants to play a pillow fight with Akhil.”

9. @GMJanGustafsson: “Come on guys, shake hands, the rest of us have work to do!”

One bonus tweet by Claudia Munoz aka @Chesscampeona, proving that women multitask more than men: “I am watching Carlsen Anand and the landing of the European Space Ship on the Comet, both at the same time.”

I hope you understand the @Chessbase tweet now :-))

@fmkrms:“Alright so ESA landed on a comet, well done… but could they do it on a wet Wednesday night in Stoke?”

One last tweet for today, a good one to think about on the rest day. @GMjtis: “Twitter is full of people who want you to say something and then tell you what you said instead of reading what you said “

Chess fans worldwide have witnessed a very eventful and entertaining Round 7 on Saturday. Both top seeded teams and both world champions lost on the same day! Lots of great games to play through, right Mark? @MarkTWIC: “It’s 3am, time for bed. Goodnight all”.

An hour later, in Tromsø … @chessninja: “So, woke up at 4am instead of 5am today. Not an improvement”.

Why did you get up so early, Mig? @chessnotes has the answer: “Up & at ’em! There’s an election to win tomorrow. Last full day to make it happen. C-H-A-R-G-E!”

Ah, that is why Mark Crowther went to sleep that late. He had a late night endless chitchat about the FIDE Elections with Georg Mastrokoukos. Must have been a pretty constructive conversation right? @MarkTwic:“Waste of time arguing with GMastrokoukos. Great saying in movie “True Grit” – “You’ve done nothing when you’ve bested a fool.”

Of course, you can discuss for hours on end about this tweet by @Gmastrokoukos: “Kirsan took over a bankrupt FIDE in ’95 with Olympiads and WCC cycle in trouble. Today FIDE $$ healthy, OLs and united WCC cycle.”

@MarkTWIC: “That was part of the problem. The officials responsible for the bankruptcy didn’t go.”

@TarjeiJS added some fuel to the quarrel by tweeting: “It seems very clear that if Kasparov wins FIDE election, Carlsen – Anand will not take place in Sochi in November.” @GMastrokoukos: “If Kasparov ever won, many events would collapse, not only this one. Fortunately, such scenarios are only fiction.”

And it did not take long until another tweet from @GMastrokokous was posted: “Final set of excuses appear by Kasparov for his coming massive defeat. 2 days before the elections he asks to change the regulations!”

Et cetera et cetera.

You may have noticed, that I prefer to concentrate on tweets about the games and the players in this blog. I could post an endless number of tweets about the FIDE Election, but that would just go beyond the scope of this blog. And is just getting silly at times: @chessninja: “Young players from 3 LatAm teams told me they’d been ordered by their captains not to take any Kasparov booth stuff, not even books. Classy.”

Talking about silly:@alinihatyazici: Humour in Tromso, Kasparov will offer draw to Fide President in FIDE elections! “No draw! Sofia rules!” is our answer”.

@TarjeiJS has some quotes from an Interview the two candidates had with @madsAAndersen:

Kirsan: “Kasparov is a destroyer”

Kasparov: “Kirsan is scaring away chess players”.

Oh, and another info from @TarjeiJS: “Regarding theFIDE election, I should mention that the organisers are considering to hire extra security on the 11th.”

A particular match we should follow @EinarGausel? “China rating favorites on 3 out of 4 boards vs Azerbaijan in the open section today. Should be a good one.” But do they play in their best line-up?@GMjtis:“Today I am wondering about China’s missing men – does anyone know why Wang Hao and Bu Xiangxi are not in”.

Another game to look forward to: @Majnu2006: “Looking forward to watch the game Shirov vs Caruana. Will the board be on fire?”

Ok let us have a look at the game. What do you think @TarjeiJS? Couldn’t believe the position after 12 moves on board 1 of Italy-Latvia.

@MarkTWIC: “What’s the opposite of “Fire on Board”?”

@BasdeMelker spotted some real fire in the Match NED-BRA “Wow! Erwin L’Ami eventually sacrificed an entire rook for 4 ambitious pawns on the q-side!”

Let us have a look at world champion Magnus Carlsen. Has he recovered from his loss against Naiditsch yesterday? He is playing against a 2600+ GM. @Jonathan_Rowson:“You see one side is rated 2604 & think: not bad! But then you notice his opponent is *273* points higher.”

@PoisonedPwnPress: “Carlsen has conjured an advantage in the endgame, and his opponent is short on time”.

I think have read that tweet somewhere before.

Another exciting match @nvmea: “Russia – Spain is going crazy guys”. @PattyLlaneza: “Amusing how many Spanish fans are changing their tweets from “how could he miss that?” of some days ago to “go go go!!!” today :-)”. @PoisondPwnPress:” Kramnik played very aggressively against Vallejo, and his attacked fizzled. Dead lost down 3(!) pawns”.

@Jonathan_Rowson:“Respect to Paco, but sad to see Kramnik so comprehensively outplayed. He hasn’t recovered since candidates tiebreak.” Malcom Pein, tweeting under the handle@telegraphchess: “Kramnik thumped by Vallejo, Russia obviously cursed after taking organisers to court”

Again, hardly any tweets about the women’s section today. Let’s send @TarjeiJS over to have a look: “And the Russian women goes marching on. Already secured a 2,5-0,5 lead over Hungary, although they are in trouble on board 3”.

We have seen a lot of turnarounds in this Olympiad, and today @telegraphchess found another one: “Amazing turnaround in Guseinov-Ni Hua China set to win the match and open up the tournament !”

Agreed. From +1.65 to -92.52 (according to the engines on the official website) in 10 moves is a convincing turnaround.

@PoisonedPwnPress: “And just like that, China-Azerbaijan turned into a route. Chinese look unstoppable and take sole lead.”

One USA player seems to be unstoppable this Olympiad and his name is not Hikaru: @playchesscom:“Shanklastic! Shankland 7/7 USA a team of extremes…”@gmjlh: “I have some catching up to do! @GMShanky at 7/7!” @Chessnotes: “R8: Sam Shamkland turning in one of the greatest performances in USA team history (7/7), congrats!”

But not only a young player like Shankland scores heavily inTromsø: we have an oldie but goodie playing for England on board one: @top40chess:“Today at the Chess Olympiad, Michael Adams pulled further ahead in the race for board 1 gold. He’s climbed from world #21 to world #14 so far!” @johnchess: “England lost to Serbia but Mickey Adams won again to maintain his place as best performer on board one”.

Meanwhile, on the lower boards….@thims1985: OFFICIAL: Surinam 3.5-0.5 Nigeria (female) Unacceptable!! And a remarkable tweet from @Tromso2014: “PRESS RELEASE: Five players and two officials from Burundi have vanished from the Chess Olympiad in Tromsø”.

@PoisonedPwnPress:“Going into the last 3 rounds, teams with 12 points have realistic chances to medal, based on the previous 3 Olympiads.” @TarjeiJS:“With the 2-2 tie against Spain, we can already conclude that Russia will NOT win the Chess Olympiad”.